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Islomania
Islomania (ˈ|aɪ|l|ɵ|ˈ|m|eɪ|n|i|ə) is a craze for or a strong attraction to Wikipedia:islands. The condition was first identified by British writer Lawrence Durrell in his book Reflections on a Marine Venus (1953): ]] In a letter to a friend Durrell wrote: "Islomania is a rare affliction of spirit. There are people who find islands somehow irresistible. The mere knowledge that they are in a little world surrounded by sea fills them with an indescribable intoxication.” The American writer Thurston Clarke uses the term in his book Searching for Crusoe (2001) in his exploration of people's attraction to all sorts of islands –from the classic desert island to places such as Wikipedia:Svalbard, from Wikipedia:Key West to Wikipedia:Mykonos. Like many strangenesses of the mind, the allure of islands seems to have a place in every mind. Perhaps we are all, to some extent, islomaniacs (islomanes, to be precise). Certainly, the hippie trail (WP) is full of islands, and for surfers, it is almost inevitable. Islomaniacs Islomaniacs (or islomanes) are those who suffer from islomania, the irresistible attraction to islands first described by Lawrence Durrell in his travel book Prospero's Cell, set in the Ionian island of Corfu. One of the first literary islomaniacs was Herman Melville. Although now famed as the writer of Moby-Dick, he was better known during his lifetime for Typee, a semi-autobiographical story of his stay in the Marquesas in French Polynesia. He followed this with Wikipedia:Omoo, set mainly in Tahiti. The fame of Typee placed the seed of islomania within other 19th century writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson, George Lewis Becke, Jules Verne, Jack London and Joseph Conrad. :"Awfully nice man here tonight," (wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in a private letter of spring 1875), "...telling us all about the South Sea Islands till I was sick with desire to go there; beautiful places, green forever; perfect climate; perfect shapes of men and women, with red flowers in their hair; and nothing to do but study oratory and etiquette, sit in the sun and pick up the fruits as they fall." For three years Stevenson sailed the Pacific in his private yacht, befriending island kings and writing stories set in the Scottish highlands, until in 1890 he built a house in Samoa; there he became embroiled in local politics, championing the Samoans against incompetent British officials, while still writing almost exclusively of misty Scottish mountains. Norman Douglas's South Wind diverted the British public during World War I with the story of an amoral idyll on Tiberius's isle of Capri. Douglas lived almost his entire life on the island, which attracted through the inter-war years a whole coterie of literary and artistic exiles, including Axel Munthe (the Swedish doctor's The Story of San Michele remains a classic of islomania, although very little of it is actually set on the island), D. H. Lawrence and Compton MacKenzie (author of Vestal Fire, a lightly fictionalised guide to Capri's golden age). Between the wars the South Pacific again attracted a host of writing talent in search of a simpler world, inspired by the venerable firm of Stevenson, London & Co. W. Somerset Maugham visited Tahiti and tracked down an original painting by Paul Gauguin, the French artist-islomane and contemporary of Stevenson, although the two never met. Maugham also wrote Rain, a short story detailing the moral disintegration of a missionary under the influence of the islands. Americans James Norman Hall, Charles Nordhoff, Robert Dean Frisbie, and Frederick O'Brien wrote numerous short stories and serials about Polynesia which captured the public imagination. The Second World War was far more disruptive of islomania than its predecessor. Lawrence Durrell's experience was typical: he had been living in peace in Corfu until the war drove him into exile in Alexandria; there, recollecting times lost, he wrote Prospero's Cell, the book which defined the term. Durrell's islomania was of the restless sort: he subsequently lived on and wrote of Rhodes (Reflections on a Marine Venus) and Cyprus (Bitter Lemons). The post-war period saw a host of islomaniac authors who, perhaps having experienced the horrors of war, saw islands as places to escape to. The most influential American contribution to the genre came with James A. Michener's Bali Hai, an island which started its mythic life in Tales of the South Pacific, then became a song (by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II) from the 1949 Broadway musical South Pacific. Bali Hai was off-limits to ordinary mortals (in this case, to U.S. servicemen). Based on the real island of Ambae (or Aoba) in the New Hebrides where Michener was stationed in World War II, it was depicted in the 1958 film version by the island of Tioman. Bali Hai is also an enduring Tiki Temple restaurant on San Diego's Shelter Island. Tropical islands seem especially friendly to artists and writers: Ernest Hemingway wrote Wikipedia:For Whom the Bell Tolls and other masterpieces at his homes in Cuba and Key West, while Paul Bowles forsook Tangier for a time to purchase a tiny off-shore islet off a beach south of Colombo, which he named Taprobane - previously owned by a bogus French aristocrat,History of Taprobane, and other matters. It is now an expensive boutique hotel.Taprobane. Wikipedia:Miguel Covarrubias painted bare-breasted maidens on Wikipedia:Bali in the Thirties, and the island continues to lure seekers of sophisticated simplicity. Not that all islomanes dream of tropical paradises: Wikipedia:Gavin Maxwell retreated to Eilean Bàn, , 6 acres (24,000 m2) of windswept rock and heath off the Isle of Skye, to write of otters, and also the Isle of Soay, where he engaged in shark fisheries, while George Orwell wrote much of Nineteen Eighty-Four while living in a barn on the island of Jura. Another prominent Scottish islomaniac was Compton MacKenzie, who loved both the Channel Islands of Herm and Jethou, and also lived on the Scottish Islands of Eilean Aigas, the Shiant Islands and Barra. While most islomanes simply live on islands, some collect them: Durrell noted that fellow-poet Kimon Friar claimed to have lived on 46 different islands, and Philip Conkling, director of Maine's Island Institute, has visited more than 1,000 islands in that state alone. Some members of the Travelers' Century Club, whose members attempt to visit as many countries as possible, have been to islands in over 100 countries. http://www.worldislandinfo.com/SUPERLATIVESV2.html Welsh writer Leslie Thomas "collects" small islands, and wrote the books A World of Islands (1983) and Some Lovely Islands (1984) about his hobby. Amateur Radio operators occasionally organize "DXpeditions" to uninhabited and sparsely populated islands with the goal of setting up temporary amateur radio stations. Once the radios, power sources, antennas and living quarters are set up on the island, they will contact thousands of other amateurs, thus giving the others credit for contacting an additional "country" for DXCC and other awards. Notable recent examples include DXpeditions to Ducie Island and Scarborough Reef. Most islomanes are gregarious, but some are not: New Zealander Tom Neale, inspired by the stories of Nordhoff and Hall and Robert Dean Frisbie, escaped to Suwarrow Atoll in the Cook Islands, where he lived alone for 16 years. Tetiaroa, one of the Society Islands, was purchased in 1965 by actor Marlon Brando, who saw and fell in love with it while filming Mutiny on the Bounty. Tetiaroa has one inhabitant: Brando's son Teihotu. In his will, Brando, who died in 2004, granted his friend Michael Jackson lifelong use of 2000 m2 (a half-acre) on the islet of Onetahi, to the west of Tetiaroa. In early 2005, actor/director Mel Gibson purchased Mago Island in Fiji for $15 million, over the protests of the descendants of Mago's original native inhabitants. Andy Strangeway is a chronic multiple islomaniac and was the first - and so far only - person known to have visited and slept on all 162 notable Scottish islands. One of the most notable islomanes outside the English-speaking world was Dutch writer Boudewijn Büch, who wrote four books on the subject of islands, commonly known in Dutch as the 'Island Series'. See also *Wikipedia:Private island *Wikipedia:The Mysterious Island Notes External links * Islomania - all about islands. Specially in literature * Russian islomaniacs fr:Islomanie Category:Private islands Category:Islands Category:Words coined in the 1950s Category:Hippie trail